Australia's Best NBN Plans, Ranked By Speed [Updated]

When it comes to the NBN, we know that plans and providers are not all equal. Despite standard speed tiers, the performance in our homes varies quite a bit, especially during the evening peak times.

As you've probably heard, the ACCC is trying to counter this by introducing industry guidance that said that providers need to put average evening speeds on their website so that consumers can judge performance alongside price.

So far we've seen two responses from the providers. Many are now publishing seemingly accurate speed data for each NBN speed tier, while others are merely publishing the minimum speed spec as laid out by the ACCC. The thing is, the minimum spec is always significantly lower than the results from the providers who are putting in the effort, making you wonder why a provider would choose not to show real results. What are they hiding?

The good news is that some providers are doing a great job of delivering the speeds that their customers are paying for, and we'd like to call them out.

Note: Our interactive tables may take a few seconds to generate. Thanks for your patience!

Aussie Broadband

If you're not familiar with Aussie Broadband, now is the time to check them out. It is one of the NBN service providers who seems to pride itself on doing a great job. This includes not offering NBN 12 plans, which we all know are the curse of Australian internet.

For the remaining speed tiers, Aussie has the best average peak-time speeds for NBN 100 plans at 90Mbps, and the second best speed for NBN 50 and NBN 25 plans.

iiNet

iiNet NBN speeds are best for households that want a good speed, but aren't looking for the best of the best. The standout speed tier is NBN 50, where iiNet maintains an average 44Mbps during the busy hours in the evening. Its basic NBN 12 speed is also pretty good, while its NBN 100 speed is a little off the pace at 82.7Mbps.

TPG

Like its stablemate iiNet, TPG average peak speeds are pretty good, especially if you'd prefer NBN 50 (average 44Mbps) over NBN 100 (78Mbps). It also offers great NBN 12 plan speeds, if you're into that sort of thing.

Internode

Trusty old Internode. For the longest time, the name Internode has been synonymous with quality internet, and its average NBN evening speeds confirm that it is still an internet provider worth a closer look.

Internode reports the industry's best NBN 50 speed and is not far off the pace for NBN 100 plans. If there is a weakness, it is on its NBN 25 plans, so be sure to focus on the faster options.

Dodo

Surprised? To be honest we were a bit as well. Dodo isn't a brand you tend to associate with performance, but the numbers speak for themselves. You can only choose NBN 12, 25 or 50 plans (Dodo doesn't sell NBN Premium plans) and the pick of the bunch is the NBN 25 plans, where Dodo has the fastest average speed for that tier at a remarkable 24Mbps.

Telstra and Optus

Rounding out the group is two of Australia's biggest providers who report suspiciously identical speeds for each tier. Both report average speeds of 9Mbps, 20Mbps, 40Mbps and 80Mbps, or roughly about 80 percent of the maximum speed across the board.

Something tells me that these figures are a bit blurry around the edges, however after both received expensive slaps on the wrist from the ACCC recently, perhaps they are just playing it safe.

Joe Hanlon is Publisher at WhistleOut, Australia’s phone and internet comparison website. He’s been writing about phones and plans for far too long.

They exist, its just hard to find any info. MyRepublic were offering them here in Wollongong around the middle of last year. Problem isn't with NBN providing it, FttP has been able to deliver those speeds (and more) for years, its with ISP's buying the bandwidth and offering it as a product.

Which has a few problems that make it more understandable, mainly around the cost of buying that bandwidth. Its not cheap, but MyRepublics plan was around $130/month from memory.

As for there not being any demand, that's kind of like saying theres no demand for 100 Mbps because less people are connecting to that speed. Which ignores that most people getting NBN now, and connecting to it, have 50 Mbps as their highest speed, so CANT connect at 100 Mbps...

Its a self serving argument justifying why FttN was rolled out, no more. And completely ignores that we'll need those speeds in the near future - what happens then?

True dat. I'd go with gigabit if I hadn't moved from a FttP address to a FttN one. And don't even get me started on how many tickets/complaints/TIO escalations it took to get that to the giddy heights of 70Mbps.
NBN's disadvantaged this country for generations to come with it's short-sighted approach. Makes me angry.

I'd narrow it down to FttN disadvantaging this country, not NBN. Get rid of FttN, the rest works in one way or another.

All the other options are either straight up replaceable, or upgradable. HFC will need to go eventually, but DOCSIS 3.1 can push it back a few years. FttC makes the upgrade cost relatively low, to the point the homeowner can absorb it. FttN cant be upgraded, so needs to basically be ripped up and replaced by FttP. Its the only option.

And that's not going to happen for a generation at least.

So looking at all the techs involved with NBN, the issue narrows down to just FttN. Thankfully, while they wont admit it out loud, they seem to realise this, and are pushing FttC where they can. Shame the damage has been done.

Is it just me or are other readers never seeing the interactive tables despite waiting hours for them to load? Have tried with Firefox, Chrome, Vivaldi, Edge on a PC with Windows 7, Windows 10 and on a Surface, Mac Book Air and an iPad but nothing, zip, nada, zilch!!

working for a small ISP currently, you need to make sure when going for an NBN plan, their contention ratio. There is no point getting a 100mbps plan when they will only provide a very small pipe for your data. These low ratios are normally found on unlimited/cheap plans.

Also stay away from residential and move to business as they normally provide better customer service and speeds.

These sort of articles are misleading, the speed is mostly reliant on your distance to exchanges and nodes, we have FTTN on Telstra and get 95% of the max speed possible because we are only 300m from the node. I know that our carrier would make no difference to that speed.

Aussie Broadband deliver what they promise - consistent speeds at all timesTo be fair, that's a sample size of one. They'll be a fair number of their customers hampered by issues (some outside to ABB's control) that will be having a torrid time. For example, shitty internal wiring will be shitty internal wiring no matter who the RSP is.

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